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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Sainsbury's to Extend Harringay Premises for Online Delivery Hub - Another Bout of Traffic Chaos?

Last month Sainsbury's submitted an application to add a further extension to the Harringay store. This time it will provide an online delivery hub and a click and collect facility. 

On the face of it, this might seem like good news - oh good fewer people driving to Sainsbury's. But, having seen the fiasco last time Sainsbury's extended and the poor level of scrutiny of the plans by the Council I have my doubts.

What's fuelling those doubts is thoughts about who the facilities will service. I imagine the catchment area for both the online delivery section as well as the click and collect will be far wider than just Harringay.

And it won't just be Sainsbury's customers using the facility. The Click and Collect services will also be available as a Collect+ outlet for the many thousands of purchases made on ebay and 350 other brands.

So:

  • we'll still probably have most of the people currently travelling to Sainsbury's by car
  • plus, an unknown number of delivery vehicle movements of goods in (from Sainsburys, ebay and 350 other merchants)
  • plus, an unknown number of vehicle movements as people drive to collect purchases from an unknown catchment area
  • plus an unknown number of collection journeys for people using the click and collect for both supermarket shopping and Collect+ to service Sainsbury's ebay and 350 other brands.

Fuelling this concern are articles like a few I've picked up recently, pointing out how the sheer scale of deliveries and our demand for immediate regular deliveries are causing problems.

  1. How London got rid of private cars – and grew more congested than ever - Britain’s biggest city has almost ground to a halt, thanks to the rise of Uber and delivery drivers
  2. Delivery disaster: the hidden environmental cost of your online shopping - mountains of packaging waste and millions of transport miles
  3. Online Shopping Was Supposed to Keep People Out of Traffic. It Only Made Things Worse
  4. 1.5 Million Packages a Day: The Internet Brings Chaos to N.Y. Streets - The push for convenience is having a stark impact on gridlock, roadway safety and pollution in New York City and urban areas around the world
  5. How Your Amazon Delivery Helps to Clog the Streets
  6. Crowded streets: Cities face a surge in online deliveries
  7. Delivery vans to blame for record traffic levels

My fears around Sainbury's plans for Harringay may be totally misplaced. I do hope so. (If the reaction to them at last week's LCSP is anything to go by, I may be alone in holding them). Only time will tell.

Sadly, the deadline for opposing the planning application passed yesterday (But as of this morning, you can still submit a comment online). I've been out of the country for the past few weeks and when I heard about this at the end of last week, I hadn't realised that the deadline was so soon. So apologies for missing this one.  For those would still like to see the application, it can be viewed here. There was only one objection. But TfL have withheld their blessing.

Tags for Forum Posts: sainsburys, traffic

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There are arguments for and against home deliveries. The issue here is that THIS SITE, given the serious traffic problems it already generates, and, seeing that there are no plans to remedy the 'incongruous' layout of the retail park and the various access lanes and parking spaces is just not the place to put a delivery service for Sainsburys.

The place is log-jammed during peak traffic and Saturdays

Do they only plan to do deliveries in the night during off peak periods?

How will they cope when there are matches at Spurs and Arsenal and concerts in F Park?

These plans are just downright stoopid. Censor my use of the word stoopid if you want. But it is plain starightforward english.

Apparently you can still make an objection online, even though we're past the official end date. Mine was late and published anyway.

Not wishing to sound too critical of highways and transportation at Haringey Council, I wonder how much CIL and S106 they get from Sainsburys and other commercial properties at the Arena which could be used  to address the traffic issues and long term masterplan for the site?  It's great that is doing so well and is popular but is it sustainable in its current form?  Could it be more of a mixed use site with housing as well as commercial and underground  parking?

I was recently at a meeting where it was pointed out that the 'Community Infrastructure Levy' - i.e. the amount developers have to pay to contribute to local facilities - is radically lower in the East of the borough vs the West of the Borough. I've done a bit of digging to locate the full figures:

The system divides the borough into three areas, West (West of the East Coast Main Line), Central (For the ladder, this means West of Green Lanes) and East (everywhere else) - see the documents below for the map: 

The base rates for 2020 are: [NB: all the actual rates are slightly higher due to indexing since 2014 - see the linked document]

- West: £265 pounds per square metre

- Central £165 pounds per square metre

- East: £15 pounds per square metre

A revised system, which has been consulted on, has:

- West: £265 pounds per square metre

- Central £165 pounds per square metre

- East: £50 pounds per square metre

The consultation on this change closed a couple of weeks ago.

Note that supermarkets have a fixed rate of £95 across the borough, which is not proposed to be changed.

So a development in Crouch End or Muswell Hill currently generates more than 17x as much CIL money as one in the Gardens/St Annes or Tottenham. If the changes that have been consulted on go through then this will move from 17x to 'just' 5x

Looking at the 2014 document explaining how this money is spent, it states:

"15%, known as the ‘Neighbourhood Proportion’, is to be spent on neighbourhood projects within the neighbourhood of contributing development (up to a maximum of £100 per existing Council Tax dwelling). In accordance with Regulation 59C, neighbourhood projects can include funding towards:

o the provision, improvement, replacement, operation or maintenance of infrastructure; or

o anything else that is concerned with addressing the demands that development places on an area.

The funding allocation rises to 25% where a Neighbourhood Plan in place. At the present time, only the Highgate Neighbourhood Plan has been adopted, and one is currently being developed for Crouch End" [the areas with Neighbourhood plans may have changed since 2014, of course)

So not only does this levy result in very substantially less money being raised in the East of the Borough, but 15-25% of the money is then spent in the Neighbourhood (and 25% of the western money is more than 4x the total money in the East!).

This all seems to accentuate the east-west divide in the borough.

I understand that this difference in cost is to encourage development in the East - but I wonder if this really does have an impact? 

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